"WASHINGTON — USEC, the sole American company in the uranium enrichment business, said Monday that it would file for bankruptcy early next year, although it hopes to keep operating."

"The company, which has received $257 million in Energy Department aid in the last two years, is a former government enterprise that the Reagan administration privatized. But like Amtrak and the Postal Service, other quasi-private entities created by the government, USEC has found life in the private sector rough going.

It plans to complete testing on prototype centrifuges and build more of them to offer enrichment on a commercial basis. USEC is aiming to compete with technologies developed in Western Europe and Russia.

But the market for enrichment has gone soft as many nuclear reactors have closed. Now, the company says that effort will cost $6.5 billion and will not be finished until 2017. Initially, it was supposed to cost $1.7 billion and be completed by 2005."